It's not quite the delectable Rainier season, but who knew cherry picking could be
so fun? Must have been those damn hayseed red state tourists running a muck up there. I'd go back further than last week but what's the point? I sure hope my in-laws are okay. Wait, am I allowed to mingle with those who have representatives that don't belong to the same fraternity? It's all so confusing. Wearing political blinders does nothing more than discredit the notion that you actually
care. I'm sure you were just extending a hand, though.
Are you really comparing the rate of gun violence in MA to that of TX?
In the same post where you're complaining about someone cherry picking data?
Not at all. If you're against gun violence (which I think everyone here is) it would make more sense to talk about the fact that it is everywhere instead of just searching out the places you're are sworn against due to the idiots in charge. I don't know about you but the last people I look to for advice are politicians. This thread is called America's Gun Violence. Every post is aimed at the other side being the cause, If you are against it, then show that you care when it happens in your own backyard. Not sure how this could be seen as comparing, just pointing out that his posts are catered to his political views only and that doesn't seem like caring to me. Seems like cherry picking.
Regardless of the source, the numbers remain comparable. Get back to me when Tejas is more like Massachusetts. Or, go back to page 1 of this thread and read all of my posts to understand where I'm coming from rather than reading one cherrypicked post of mine. It'll make you blush.
It's not quite the delectable Rainier season, but who knew cherry picking could be
so fun? Must have been those damn hayseed red state tourists running a muck up there. I'd go back further than last week but what's the point? I sure hope my in-laws are okay. Wait, am I allowed to mingle with those who have representatives that don't belong to the same fraternity? It's all so confusing. Wearing political blinders does nothing more than discredit the notion that you actually
care. I'm sure you were just extending a hand, though.
Are you really comparing the rate of gun violence in MA to that of TX?
In the same post where you're complaining about someone cherry picking data?
Not at all. If you're against gun violence (which I think everyone here is) it would make more sense to talk about the fact that it is everywhere instead of just searching out the places you're are sworn against due to the idiots in charge. I don't know about you but the last people I look to for advice are politicians. This thread is called America's Gun Violence. Every post is aimed at the other side being the cause, If you are against it, then show that you care when it happens in your own backyard. Not sure how this could be seen as comparing, just pointing out that his posts are catered to his political views only and that doesn't seem like caring to me. Seems like cherry picking.
How is bringing up gun violence in MA in response to criticism of gun violence in TX not cherry picking?
No one's denying that gun violence is everywhere in this shit hole country of ours... with that being said, MA has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and wouldn't you know it, one of the lowest rates of death by firearm... WAY lower than Texas. Go figure.
It's almost as if gun laws work, despite everything you've been told.
It's not quite the delectable Rainier season, but who knew cherry picking could be
so fun? Must have been those damn hayseed red state tourists running a muck up there. I'd go back further than last week but what's the point? I sure hope my in-laws are okay. Wait, am I allowed to mingle with those who have representatives that don't belong to the same fraternity? It's all so confusing. Wearing political blinders does nothing more than discredit the notion that you actually
care. I'm sure you were just extending a hand, though.
Are you really comparing the rate of gun violence in MA to that of TX?
In the same post where you're complaining about someone cherry picking data?
Not at all. If you're against gun violence (which I think everyone here is) it would make more sense to talk about the fact that it is everywhere instead of just searching out the places you're are sworn against due to the idiots in charge. I don't know about you but the last people I look to for advice are politicians. This thread is called America's Gun Violence. Every post is aimed at the other side being the cause, If you are against it, then show that you care when it happens in your own backyard. Not sure how this could be seen as comparing, just pointing out that his posts are catered to his political views only and that doesn't seem like caring to me. Seems like cherry picking.
How is bringing up gun violence in MA in response to criticism of gun violence in TX not cherry picking?
No one's denying that gun violence is everywhere in this shit hole country of ours... with that being said, MA has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and wouldn't you know it, one of the lowest rates of death by firearm... WAY lower than Texas. Go figure.
It's almost as if gun laws work, despite everything you've been told.
I still say if things are to change, the media needs to start showing the actual aftermath of these shooting on TV and in print. Show pictures of the 70 year old grandma with her chest partly blown out in a church pew, a head shot father slumped over a shopping cart, the lifeless bodies of kids bled out in a school hallway. Stick it in people’s faces, especially the politicians.
I still say if things are to change, the media needs to start showing the actual aftermath of these shooting on TV and in print. Show pictures of the 70 year old grandma with her chest partly blown out in a church pew, a head shot father slumped over a shopping cart, the lifeless bodies of kids bled out in a school hallway. Stick it in people’s faces, especially the politicians.
Won't do anything. You see that in videogames and movies already. Desensitizing is the word.
It's not quite the delectable Rainier season, but who knew cherry picking could be
so fun? Must have been those damn hayseed red state tourists running a muck up there. I'd go back further than last week but what's the point? I sure hope my in-laws are okay. Wait, am I allowed to mingle with those who have representatives that don't belong to the same fraternity? It's all so confusing. Wearing political blinders does nothing more than discredit the notion that you actually
care. I'm sure you were just extending a hand, though.
Are you really comparing the rate of gun violence in MA to that of TX?
In the same post where you're complaining about someone cherry picking data?
Not at all. If you're against gun violence (which I think everyone here is) it would make more sense to talk about the fact that it is everywhere instead of just searching out the places you're are sworn against due to the idiots in charge. I don't know about you but the last people I look to for advice are politicians. This thread is called America's Gun Violence. Every post is aimed at the other side being the cause, If you are against it, then show that you care when it happens in your own backyard. Not sure how this could be seen as comparing, just pointing out that his posts are catered to his political views only and that doesn't seem like caring to me. Seems like cherry picking.
How is bringing up gun violence in MA in response to criticism of gun violence in TX not cherry picking?
No one's denying that gun violence is everywhere in this shit hole country of ours... with that being said, MA has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and wouldn't you know it, one of the lowest rates of death by firearm... WAY lower than Texas. Go figure.
It's almost as if gun laws work, despite everything you've been told.
You are manufacturing a comparison, where in my post did I ever compare anything? Texas was not even the state I responded to him about if you want to go back and read the thread. I showed him that if you want to talk about gun violence then all he would need to do is turn on the local news instead of searching out an agenda piece. To show that I am not a political goon I shared an article from my hometown as an example of how easy it is.
It's not quite the delectable Rainier season, but who knew cherry picking could be
so fun? Must have been those damn hayseed red state tourists running a muck up there. I'd go back further than last week but what's the point? I sure hope my in-laws are okay. Wait, am I allowed to mingle with those who have representatives that don't belong to the same fraternity? It's all so confusing. Wearing political blinders does nothing more than discredit the notion that you actually
care. I'm sure you were just extending a hand, though.
Are you really comparing the rate of gun violence in MA to that of TX?
In the same post where you're complaining about someone cherry picking data?
Not at all. If you're against gun violence (which I think everyone here is) it would make more sense to talk about the fact that it is everywhere instead of just searching out the places you're are sworn against due to the idiots in charge. I don't know about you but the last people I look to for advice are politicians. This thread is called America's Gun Violence. Every post is aimed at the other side being the cause, If you are against it, then show that you care when it happens in your own backyard. Not sure how this could be seen as comparing, just pointing out that his posts are catered to his political views only and that doesn't seem like caring to me. Seems like cherry picking.
How is bringing up gun violence in MA in response to criticism of gun violence in TX not cherry picking?
No one's denying that gun violence is everywhere in this shit hole country of ours... with that being said, MA has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and wouldn't you know it, one of the lowest rates of death by firearm... WAY lower than Texas. Go figure.
It's almost as if gun laws work, despite everything you've been told.
You are manufacturing a comparison, where in my post did I ever compare anything? Texas was not even the state I responded to him about if you want to go back and read the thread. I showed him that if you want to talk about gun violence then all he would need to do is turn on the local news instead of searching out an agenda piece. To show that I am not a political goon I shared an article from my hometown as an example of how easy it is.
Clearly gun violence isn't equal.
Fair enough.
Missed the part about Miami ... I found it odd that all 6 of your examples were from MA... I guess I inferred something that wasn't there.
It's not quite the delectable Rainier season, but who knew cherry picking could be
so fun? Must have been those damn hayseed red state tourists running a muck up there. I'd go back further than last week but what's the point? I sure hope my in-laws are okay. Wait, am I allowed to mingle with those who have representatives that don't belong to the same fraternity? It's all so confusing. Wearing political blinders does nothing more than discredit the notion that you actually
care. I'm sure you were just extending a hand, though.
Are you really comparing the rate of gun violence in MA to that of TX?
In the same post where you're complaining about someone cherry picking data?
Not at all. If you're against gun violence (which I think everyone here is) it would make more sense to talk about the fact that it is everywhere instead of just searching out the places you're are sworn against due to the idiots in charge. I don't know about you but the last people I look to for advice are politicians. This thread is called America's Gun Violence. Every post is aimed at the other side being the cause, If you are against it, then show that you care when it happens in your own backyard. Not sure how this could be seen as comparing, just pointing out that his posts are catered to his political views only and that doesn't seem like caring to me. Seems like cherry picking.
How is bringing up gun violence in MA in response to criticism of gun violence in TX not cherry picking?
No one's denying that gun violence is everywhere in this shit hole country of ours... with that being said, MA has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and wouldn't you know it, one of the lowest rates of death by firearm... WAY lower than Texas. Go figure.
It's almost as if gun laws work, despite everything you've been told.
You are manufacturing a comparison, where in my post did I ever compare anything? Texas was not even the state I responded to him about if you want to go back and read the thread. I showed him that if you want to talk about gun violence then all he would need to do is turn on the local news instead of searching out an agenda piece. To show that I am not a political goon I shared an article from my hometown as an example of how easy it is.
Clearly gun violence isn't equal.
Fair enough.
Missed the part about Miami ... I found it odd that all 6 of your examples were from MA... I guess I inferred something that wasn't there.
No worries. I am not here to bash or push anything on anyone. Just to offer a different perspective from time to time.
I still say if things are to change, the media needs to start showing the actual aftermath of these shooting on TV and in print. Show pictures of the 70 year old grandma with her chest partly blown out in a church pew, a head shot father slumped over a shopping cart, the lifeless bodies of kids bled out in a school hallway. Stick it in people’s faces, especially the politicians.
Won't do anything. You see that in videogames and movies already. Desensitizing is the word.
Disagree. Outside of adolescents those brains are not fully developed, those with developmental issues, and sociopaths (those who are unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality); humans, on a whole, are generally repulsed by, and avoid viewing people dying/imagery of actual deceased people. Especially when violence is involved.
The fact that we are never shown the aftermath of mass shootings, and that any footage is usually swept up and removed from public view quickly reinforces that idea that people find it extremely disturbing.
Political advice notwithstanding, including the most recent one to not yet make the list of mass shootings in the US in 2021, Tejas has a commanding lead of 21-1. And I should be concerned about my purported back yard?
Clearly, more guns and making them easier to obtain is the solution to ‘Murica’s gun violence problem. Too bad the rest of ‘Murica isn’t following Tejas’ lead. Don’t worry, won’t be long.
Rash of mass shootings stirs US fears heading into summer
By KATHLEEN FOODY
19 mins ago
CHICAGO (AP) — Two people were killed and at least 30 others wounded in mass shootings overnight in three states, authorities said Saturday, stoking concerns that a spike in U.S. gun violence could continue into summer as coronavirus restrictions ease and more people are free to socialize.
No one was arrested as of Saturday afternoon in any of the attacks, which took place late Friday or early Saturday in the Texas capital of Austin, Chicago and Savannah, Georgia.
In Austin, authorities said they arrested one of two male suspects and were searching for the other after a shooting early Saturday on a crowded pedestrian-only street packed with bars and restaurants. Fourteen people were wounded, including two critically, in the gunfire, which the city's interim police chief said is believed to have started as a dispute between two parties.
In Chicago, a woman was killed and nine other people were wounded when two men opened fire on a group standing on a sidewalk in the Chatham neighborhood on the city's South Side. The shooters also got away and hadn't been identified by mid-afternoon Saturday.
In the south Georgia city of Savannah, police said one man was killed and seven other people were wounded in a mass shooting Friday evening, police said. Two of the wounded are children — an 18-month-old and a 13-year-old.
Savannah's police chief, Roy Minter, Jr., said the shooting may be linked to an ongoing dispute between two groups, citing reports of gunshots being fired at the same apartment complex earlier in the week.
“It's very disturbing what we're seeing across the country and the level of gun violence that we're seeing across the country," he told reporters Saturday. "It's disturbing and it's senseless.”
The attacks come amid an easing of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in much of the country, including Chicago, which lifted many of its remaining safeguards on Friday. Many hoped that a spike in U.S. shootings and homicides last year was an aberration perhaps caused by pandemic-related stress amid a rise in gun ownership and debate over policing. But those rates are still higher than they were in pre-pandemic times, including in cities that refused to slash police spending following the death of George Floyd and those that made modest cuts.
“There was a hope this might simply be a statistical blip that would start to come down," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “That hasn't happened. And that's what really makes chiefs worry that we may be entering a new period where we will see a reversal of 20 years of declines in these crimes.”
Tracking ups and downs in crime is always complicated, but violent crime commonly increases in the summer months. Weekend evenings and early-morning hours also are common windows for shootings.
Many types of crime did decline in 2020 and have stayed lower this year, suggesting the pandemic and the activism and unrest spurred by the reaction to Floyd’s death didn’t lead to an overall spike in crime.
The 17 mass shootings in 2020 was the lowest annual total in a decade, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The database tracks all mass killings including shootings, defined as four or more people dead not including the perpetrator.
According to that definition, there have been 17 mass killings, 16 of those shootings, already this year, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University.
The Gun Violence Archive, which monitors media and police reports to track gun violence, defines mass shootings as those involving four or more people who were shot, regardless of whether they died. Overall, according to its database, more than 8,700 people have died of gun violence in the U.S. this year.
The GVA also found that mass shootings spiked in 2020 to about 600, which was higher than in any of the previous six years it tracked the statistic. According to this year's count, there have been at least 267 mass shootings in the U.S. so far, including the latest three overnight Friday into Saturday.
“It’s worrisome,” Fox said. “We have a blend of people beginning to get out and about in public. We have lots of divisiveness. And we have more guns and warm weather. It’s a potentially deadly mix.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
And most of all, it has unfolded on city streets and in family homes, away from the cameras and far from the national spotlight.
By almost every measure, 2021 has already been a terrible year for gun violence. Many fear it will get worse. Last weekend alone, more than 120 people died in shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, with three especially dangerous incidents in Austin, Chicago and Savannah, Ga., leaving two dead and at least 30 injured.
Through the first five months of 2021, gunfire killed more than 8,100 people in the United States, about 54 lives lost per day, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research organization. That’s 14 more deaths per day than the average toll during the same period of the previous six years.
This year, the number of casualties, along with the overall number of shootings that have killed or injured at least one person, exceeds those of the first five months of 2020, which finished as the deadliest year of gun violence in at least two decades.
From 2015-2019, about 40 people per day were killed in incidents of gun violence. 2020 saw a huge increase in gun deaths compared with previous years and 2021 is trending higher.
Experts have attributed the increase to a variety of new and long-standing issues — including entrenched inequality, soaring gun ownership, and fraying relations between police and the communities they serve — all intensified during the coronavirus pandemic and widespreaduprisings for racial justice.The violence, its causes and its solutions have sparked wide-ranging and fierce policy debates.
The Post’s analysis found an increase in shootings during summers, especially last year, echoing a trend that law enforcement officials and gun violence researchers have warned about for years. With the weather warming, school letting out and virus-related restrictions falling away, leaders are worrying about a deadlier season than usual.
“I’m scared to death of the summer, I’ll be real honest,” said Mark Bryant, the Gun Violence Archive’s founder. “I expect this to be a record year.”
Gunfire deaths began to rise in April 2020, when covid-19 shut down much of the country, in-person schooling was paused and more than 20 million people lost their jobs. Gun violence — like the coronavirus — takes an unequal toll on communities of color. So as the pandemic took hold, it was one crisis on top of another.
“What we have is compounded trauma,” said Shani Buggs, an assistant professor with the University of California at Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program. “The pandemic exacerbated all of the inequities we had in our country — along racial lines, health lines, social lines, economic lines. All of the drivers of gun violence pre-pandemic were just worsened last year.”
In most places, violent-crime rates remain well below what they were in the 1980s and early 1990s, a period that gave way to “the great American crime decline.” But last year, in some of the country’s largest cities, homicides increased by a total of 30 percent when compared with 2019.
In July 2020, shooting deaths reached a peak of roughly 58 per day and continued, nearly unabated, around that level until early 2021.
Now, the numbers are rising again.
In the nation’s capital, 2020 set a recent record for homicides — mostly from gun violence — and their number is rising again, even with the annual summer crime prevention initiative well underway. Seventy-nine people were killed in the District during the first five months of 2021, a 23 percent increase over the previous year.
At a recent vigil for Kassius-Kohn Glay, a 16-year-old standout high school student who was fatally shot last month, his parents said they were conscious of the danger their son, a young Black man, would face in his Northwest Washington neighborhood. Last year, Glay saw his best friend die in a shooting.
“I don’t want this to happen no more,” Glay’s mother, Juanita Culbreth, said at the memorial. “To the last breath of my body, I’m going to be sure. I’m going to keep on advocating for y’all.”
After a string of deadly shootings in Miami, the city’s police chief, Art Acevedo, went on national television to warn about the coming months.
“Unless we all start speaking up, speaking out and demanding our elected officials take action, we’re going to see a lot more bloodshed,” Acevedo, who also heads the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
A week after Acevedo’s TV appearance, a shooting at a Miami graduation party left three dead and five wounded.
Shootings have also increased in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Columbus, Ohio. In Philadelphia, officials are preparing for what could be the deadliest year in the city’s history. The mayor is holding regular updates on gun violence, reminiscent of weekly coronavirus briefings.
But the rise in gun violence is not just a big-city phenomenon. The number of gunfire deaths has also increased in suburban and rural areas, though the overall numbers are lower because of smaller populations.
Researchers note a number of factors they say are driving the upswing, including the unprecedented surge in gun sales. In 2020, a year of pandemic, protests and elections, people purchased more than 23 million guns, a 66 percent increase over 2019 sales, according to a Post analysis of federal data on gun background checks.
In January and February of 2021, people bought more guns than they did during either month of any previous year in which such purchases were recorded. In January alone, about 2.5 million guns were sold, the third-highest one-month total, behind only June and July of 2020.
Before 2020, gun-sales spikes coincided with elections and mass shootings, such as the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in late 2012. Last year, the numbers climbed during pandemic-induced shutdowns and again in the summer, with millions protesting a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd.
Controlling for population, the analysis found the higher the jump in gun sales between 2019 and 2020, the higher the jump in gun violence that resulted in at least one death.
Michigan and Nevada were among the states with the largest per capita increase in gun sales and gun-related deaths, while Washington state and Oklahoma saw their rates of gun violence stay relatively flat.
A large body of research shows gun availability increases the relative risk of fatal shootings, and Buggs co-wrote a study last year that found an association between firearm purchases that spring and a statistically significant increase in firearm violence.
Researchers caution against drawing causal links, especially during a year as unique as 2020, and Buggs said gun sales are among a number of elements that “are difficult to tease out.” Others have noted that millions of guns were sold in past decades, when crime rates were falling, and have said one year of data is not enough to settle the matter.
Early numbers indicate a large slice of 2020 gun buyers — about a fifth — purchased their first-ever firearm.
That flood of new gun owners, plus a possible lack of in-person firearm-safety training because of coronavirus shutdowns, is a worrying combination for Cassandra Crifasi, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy.
“All of these people who bought guns in the context of fear around the pandemic and the unrest and uprising in relation to the murder of George Floyd, what do they do with those guns now?” she said.
That flood of new gun owners, plus a possible lack of in-person firearm-safety training because of coronavirus shutdowns, is a worrying combination for Cassandra Crifasi, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy.
“All of these people who bought guns in the context of fear around the pandemic and the unrest and uprising in relation to the murder of George Floyd, what do they do with those guns now?” she said.
The Post found the number of fatal shootings the Gun Violence Archive classified as some type of accident increased by more than 40 percent from 2019 to 2020. The number of deadly incidents involving children — who may get guns from adults who do not store them properly — also rose by 45 percent, though a share of that is attributable to other types of shootings. The analysis does not include suicides because real-time data is unavailable, but researchers have noted worrying signs that gun-related suicides, along with intimate-partner violence and family violence, are also on the rise.
The past 14 months have presented “a perfect storm,” Crifasi said. Along with the mass influx of guns, the pandemic fueled a recession that overwhelmingly affected low-wage and minority workers and would keep Black women and men out of jobs longer than other Americans. Then a police officer killed Floyd in Minneapolis, leading to an erosion of public confidence in law enforcement. The protests after Floyd’s murder yielded more images of police brutality. An increase in violence was underway, but it continued to rise, experts noted, just as it did after police killings in Ferguson, Mo., and Chicago in 2014.
The pandemic and protests also thinned officer ranks, sickening them or sending them to manage unrest. Researcher and former U.S. district judge Paul Cassell has charted in some cities a decline in street and vehicle stops, termed “proactive policing.”
Through it all, young people were especially vulnerable, with activities that normally provide structure and support — in-person school, sports, social work and community-level violence-prevention programs — not operating.
California-based Advance Peace is one of those organizations.
Julius Thibodeaux Jr., the strategy program manager for the nonprofit’s Sacramento chapter, calls gun violence “the forgotten pandemic.” The work he and his team do to fight it depends on human-to-human contact. It can’t be done remotely.
Before covid-19, Sacramento was on a 28-month run of no juvenile homicides. But the pandemic temporarily shuttered the program, which works with those most at risk of being involved in gun violence — as perpetrators or victims. The regular life skills classes and one-on-one counseling were put on hold, outings to places such as Universal Studios and sports events were canceled, and just hanging out, having a conversation over a meal, became more difficult. All those interactions help build a foundation that prevents violence, Thibodeaux said.
“The pandemic really limited us in doing the very things that make the program successful,” he said. “I don’t think people know what it means to take a young person out of the environment where they’re impacted by trauma on a daily basis, to exhale, to take a look around and not feel threatened by their very environment.”
Thibodeaux has seen more anger in his city since the onset of the pandemic, more people looking to settle arguments with deadly weapons, more despair. Homicides in Sacramento rose by 26 percent from 2019 to 2020, and four young people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl, police reported.
It could have been worse, Thibodeaux said, if Advance Peace and groups like it hadn’t continued their work, even in a limited capacity. Advance Peace Sacramento says it mediated hundreds of conflicts that may have otherwise escalated. The group’s mentors prevented at least 84 “imminent gun violence conflicts” and responded to 83 shootings, stopping potential retaliation, according to a year-end report prepared by the University of California at Berkeley.
Advance Peace is starting to resume pre-pandemic operations, but many of the other problems linger, which is why experts expect the violence to continue.
During the pandemic’s first year, public mass shootings were largely absent from national headlines — until a pair of deadly rampages in March, roughly one week apart, in the Atlanta area and Boulder, Colo. This began a run of high-profile shootings, which account for a relatively small fraction of overall firearm deaths, that some have identified as a cluster, where one attack may prompt another.
But throughout 2020 and into 2021, there were soaring levels of shootings that killed or injured four or more people and didn’t get much widespread attention beyond the places they occurred.
This is happening amid growing calls to treat gun violence not only as a matter of law and order but as a public health concern.
Crifasi, of the Johns Hopkins center, has drawn a parallel to the opioid epidemic: Heroin wreaked havoc in Black communities for decades, giving rise to a “war on drugs.” But, she said, “as soon as opioids started impacting White communities, it was a public health crisis.”
“When we think about gun violence, it’s been ravaging Black and Brown communities for decades,” Crifasi said. “But it wasn’t until mass shootings started impacting predominantly White communities that people really started paying attention.”
There are signs that elected officials are increasingly embracing a public health approach, perhaps most notably in President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which includes $5 billion over eight years to fund gun violence prevention programs. Negotiations with Senate Republicans over the proposal are stalled.
That legislation, along with the latest covid-19 stimulus package, which allows local governments to direct federal relief money to gun violence prevention, could have a far-reaching impact, said Buggs, the UC Davis professor.
“The federal government has never invested in community violence intervention and prevention in this way,” she said.
The funding could help cities and organizations address the mental health challenges that come with the violence, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and feelings of isolation — work Buggs said police officers cannot do.
“In communities where there is gun violence, there needs to be conversations about how can we stop this,” she said. “How can we address people’s anger and fear and pain in ways that lower the risk of individuals solving disputes and conflicts in fatal ways?”
In D.C., officials recently rolled out a program to distribute grants to people or groups involved in promoting public safety. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced last month what he described as the largest-ever state investment in violence intervention and prevention, more than $200 million over three years.
This, Advance Peace’s Thibodeaux said, is a start.
“You can’t just say a prayer and throw pennies at this pandemic and expect it to go away,” he said. “It’s going to take more than prayer and pennies.”
ABOUT THIS STORY
Gun violence deaths and incidents based on data from the Gun Violence Archive. Post analysis on the Gun Violence Archive was limited to incidents with at least one death. Firearm sales estimates are based on methodology applied to FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System data surveying handgun, long-gun and multiple-gun background checks leading to purchases.
The pandemic and protests also thinned officer ranks, sickening them or sending them to manage unrest. Researcher and former U.S. district judge Paul Cassell has charted in some cities a decline in street and vehicle stops, termed “proactive policing.”
Through it all, young people were especially vulnerable, with activities that normally provide structure and support — in-person school, sports, social work and community-level violence-prevention programs — not operating.
California-based Advance Peace is one of those organizations.
Julius Thibodeaux Jr., the strategy program manager for the nonprofit’s Sacramento chapter, calls gun violence “the forgotten pandemic.” The work he and his team do to fight it depends on human-to-human contact. It can’t be done remotely.
Before covid-19, Sacramento was on a 28-month run of no juvenile homicides. But the pandemic temporarily shuttered the program, which works with those most at risk of being involved in gun violence — as perpetrators or victims. The regular life skills classes and one-on-one counseling were put on hold, outings to places such as Universal Studios and sports events were canceled, and just hanging out, having a conversation over a meal, became more difficult. All those interactions help build a foundation that prevents violence, Thibodeaux said.
“The pandemic really limited us in doing the very things that make the program successful,” he said. “I don’t think people know what it means to take a young person out of the environment where they’re impacted by trauma on a daily basis, to exhale, to take a look around and not feel threatened by their very environment.”
Thibodeaux has seen more anger in his city since the onset of the pandemic, more people looking to settle arguments with deadly weapons, more despair. Homicides in Sacramento rose by 26 percent from 2019 to 2020, and four young people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl, police reported.
It could have been worse, Thibodeaux said, if Advance Peace and groups like it hadn’t continued their work, even in a limited capacity. Advance Peace Sacramento says it mediated hundreds of conflicts that may have otherwise escalated. The group’s mentors prevented at least 84 “imminent gun violence conflicts” and responded to 83 shootings, stopping potential retaliation, according to a year-end report prepared by the University of California at Berkeley.
Advance Peace is starting to resume pre-pandemic operations, but many of the other problems linger, which is why experts expect the violence to continue.
During the pandemic’s first year, public mass shootings were largely absent from national headlines — until a pair of deadly rampages in March, roughly one week apart, in the Atlanta area and Boulder, Colo. This began a run of high-profile shootings, which account for a relatively small fraction of overall firearm deaths, that some have identified as a cluster, where one attack may prompt another.
But throughout 2020 and into 2021, there were soaring levels of shootings that killed or injured four or more people and didn’t get much widespread attention beyond the places they occurred.
This is happening amid growing calls to treat gun violence not only as a matter of law and order but as a public health concern.
Crifasi, of the Johns Hopkins center, has drawn a parallel to the opioid epidemic: Heroin wreaked havoc in Black communities for decades, giving rise to a “war on drugs.” But, she said, “as soon as opioids started impacting White communities, it was a public health crisis.”
“When we think about gun violence, it’s been ravaging Black and Brown communities for decades,” Crifasi said. “But it wasn’t until mass shootings started impacting predominantly White communities that people really started paying attention.”
There are signs that elected officials are increasingly embracing a public health approach, perhaps most notably in President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which includes $5 billion over eight years to fund gun violence prevention programs. Negotiations with Senate Republicans over the proposal are stalled.
That legislation, along with the latest covid-19 stimulus package, which allows local governments to direct federal relief money to gun violence prevention, could have a far-reaching impact, said Buggs, the UC Davis professor.
“The federal government has never invested in community violence intervention and prevention in this way,” she said.
The funding could help cities and organizations address the mental health challenges that come with the violence, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and feelings of isolation — work Buggs said police officers cannot do.
“In communities where there is gun violence, there needs to be conversations about how can we stop this,” she said. “How can we address people’s anger and fear and pain in ways that lower the risk of individuals solving disputes and conflicts in fatal ways?”
In D.C., officials recently rolled out a program to distribute grants to people or groups involved in promoting public safety. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced last month what he described as the largest-ever state investment in violence intervention and prevention, more than $200 million over three years.
This, Advance Peace’s Thibodeaux said, is a start.
“You can’t just say a prayer and throw pennies at this pandemic and expect it to go away,” he said. “It’s going to take more than prayer and pennies.”
ABOUT THIS STORY
Gun violence deaths and incidents based on data from the Gun Violence Archive. Post analysis on the Gun Violence Archive was limited to incidents with at least one death. Firearm sales estimates are based on methodology applied to FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System data surveying handgun, long-gun and multiple-gun background checks leading to purchases.
This is quite the opposite of cherry picking. Thank you for sharing this informative piece on the issue and some of the programs implemented in the fight against it.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
This paragraph from the article mrussel posted in the Biden thread strikes me and leads me to think a couple of things:
Most people with schizophrenia do not commit acts of violence — in fact, people with severe mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. But Kinkel’s voices demanded he commit terrible violence at an incredibly vulnerable time in his young life.
Mainly, how things might have been different if he wasn't given a rifle when he was 12, allowed to purchase a hand gun with money he had saved a year before he committed the killings and if he had gotten the appropriate mental health care with his father being more supportive of his getting treatment. Oh, and if "responsible" gun owners secured their firearms so they couldn't be stolen and sold for $110.00.
The ease with which firearms are obtained is absolutely ridiculous. 'Murica, and the shots ring out.
By KRISTIN M. HALL, JAMES LAPORTA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD
Today
The U.S. Army has hidden or downplayed the extent to which its firearms disappear, significantly understating losses and thefts even as some weapons are used in street crimes.
The Army’s pattern of secrecy and suppression dates back nearly a decade, when The Associated Press began investigating weapons accountability within the military. Officials fought the release of information for years, then offered misleading answers that contradict internal records.
Military guns aren’t just disappearing. Stolen guns have been used in shootings, brandished to rob and threaten people and recovered in the hands of felons. Thieves sold assault rifles to a street gang.
Army officials cited information that suggests only a couple of hundred firearms vanished during the 2010s. Internal Army memos that AP obtained show losses many times higher.
Efforts to suppress information date to 2012, when AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records from a registry where all four armed services are supposed to report firearms loss or theft.
The former Army insider who oversaw this registry described how he pulled an accounting of the Army’s lost or stolen weapons, but learned later that his superiors blocked its release.
As AP continued to press for information, including through legal challenges, the Army produced a list of missing weapons that was so clearly incomplete officials later disavowed it. They then produced a second set of records that also did not give a full count.
Secrecy surrounding a sensitive topic extends beyond the Army. The Air Force wouldn’t provide data on missing weapons, saying answers would have to await a federal records request AP filed 1.5 years ago.
The broader Department of Defense also has not released reports of weapons losses that it receives from the armed services. It would only provide approximate totals for two years of AP's 2010 through 2019 study period.
The Pentagon stopped regularly sharing information about missing weapons with Congress years ago, apparently in the 1990s. Defense Department officials said they would still notify lawmakers if a theft or loss meets the definition of being “significant,” but no such notification has been made since at least 2017.
On Tuesday, when AP first published its investigation, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., demanded during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the Pentagon resurrect regular reporting. In a written statement to AP, the Pentagon said it “looks forward to continuing to work with Congress to ensure appropriate oversight.”
Blumenthal also challenged Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on her branch’s release of information.
“I’d be happy to look into how we’ve handled this issue,” Wormuth replied. She described herself as “open to” a new reporting requirement and said the number of military firearms obtained by civilians is likely small.
Poor record-keeping in the military’s vast inventory systems means lost or stolen guns can be listed on property records as safe. Security breakdowns were evident all the way down to individual units, which have destroyed records, falsified inventory checks and ignored procedures.
Brig. Gen. Duane Miller, the No. 2 law enforcement official in the Army, said that when a weapon does vanish the case is thoroughly investigated. He pointed out that weapons cases are a small fraction of the more than 10,000 felony cases Army investigators open each year.
“I absolutely believe that the procedures we had in place absolutely mitigated any weapon from getting lost or stolen,” Miller said of his own experience as a commander. “But does it happen? It sure does.”
___
The Associated Press began investigating the loss and theft of military firearms by asking a simple question in 2011: How many guns are unaccounted for across the Army, Marines Corps, Navy and Air Force?
AP was told the answer could be found in the Department of Defense Small Arms and Light Weapons Registry. That centralized database, which the Army oversees, tracks the life cycle of rifles, pistols, shotguns, machine guns and more -- from supply depots to unit armories, through deployments, until the weapon is destroyed or sold.
Getting data from the registry, however, would require a formal Freedom of Information Act request.
That request, filed in 2012, came to Charles Royal, then the longtime Army civilian employee who was in charge of the registry at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.
Royal was accustomed to inquiries. Military and civilian law enforcement agencies would call him thousands of times each year, often because they were looking for a military weapon or had recovered one.
In response to AP’s request, Royal pulled and double-checked data on missing weapons. Royal then showed the results to his boss, the deputy commander of his department.
“After he got it, he said, ‘We can’t be letting this out like this,’” said Royal, who retired in 2014, in an interview last year.
His boss didn’t say exactly why, but Royal said the release he prepared on weapons loss was heavily scrutinized within the Army.
“The numbers that we were going to give was going to kind of freak everybody out to a certain extent,” Royal said -- not just because they were firearms, but also because the military requires strict supervision of them.
AP was unable to reach Royal’s supervisor and an Army spokesman had no comment on the handling of the FOIA request.
In 2013, the Army said it would not release any records. The AP appealed that decision and, nearly four years later, Army lawyers agreed that registry records should be public.
It wasn’t until 2019 that the Army released a small batch of data. The records from the registry showed 288 firearms over six years.
Though years in the making, the response was clearly incomplete.
Standing in the stacks at the public library in Decatur, Alabama, last fall, Royal reviewed the seven printed pages of records that Army eventually provided AP.
“This is worthless,” he said.
Told that in multiple years, the Army reported just a single missing weapon, Royal was skeptical. “Out of the millions that they handled, that’s wrong,” he said in a later interview. AP has appealed the FOIA release for a second time.
The data weren’t even accurate when compared to Army criminal investigation records. Using the unique serial numbers assigned to every weapon, AP identified 19 missing firearms that were not in the registry data. This included a M240B machine gun that an Army National Guard unit reported missing in Wyoming in 2014.
The Army could not explain the discrepancy.
Reporters also filed another records act request for criminal cases opened by Army investigators.
In response, Army’s Criminal Investigation Command produced summaries of closed investigations into missing or stolen weapons, weapons parts, explosives or ammunition.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Brandon Kelley said that the records were “the Army’s most accurate list of physical losses.” Yet again, the total from the records provided -- 230 missing rifles or handguns during the 2010s -- was a clear undercount.
The records did not reflect several major closed cases and excluded open cases, which typically take years to finish. That meant any weapons investigators are actively trying to track down were not part of the total.
Army’s first two answers -- 288 and 230 -- are contradicted by an internal analysis, one that officials initially denied they had done.
Asked in an interview whether the Army analyzes trends of missing weapons, Miller said no -- there were breakdowns of murders, rapes and property crimes, but not weapons loss or theft.
“I don’t spend a lot of time tracking this data,” Miller said.
In fact, in 2019 and 2020, the Army distributed memos describing military weapons loss as having “the highest importance.” The numbers of missing “arms and arms components remain the same or increased” over the seven years covered by the memos, called ALARACTs.
A trend analysis in the document cited theft and “neglect” as the most common factors.
The memos counted 1,303 missing rifles and handguns from 2013-2019.
During the same seven years, the investigative records the Army said were authoritative showed 62 lost or stolen rifles or handguns.
Army officials said that some number they couldn’t specify were recovered among the 1,303. The data, which could include some combat losses and may include some duplications, came from criminal investigations and incident reports. The internal memos are not “an authoritative document,” and were not closely checked with public release in mind, Army spokesman Kelley said.
Members of Miller’s physical security division were tracking the data, though Miller said he wasn’t personally aware of the memos until AP brought them to his attention. He said that that if he were, he would have shared them.
“When one weapon is lost, I’m concerned. When 100 weapons are lost, I’m concerned. When 500 are lost, I’m concerned,” Miller said in a second interview.
Each armed service is supposed to inform the Office of the Secretary of Defense of losses or thefts. That office also has not released data to AP, but spokesman John Kirby gave approximate numbers of missing weapons for the past few years. The numbers were lower than AP’s totals.
“There is no effort to conceal,” Kirby said. “There is no effort to obstruct.”
___
Hall reported from Nashville, Tennessee; LaPorta reported from Boca Raton, Florida; Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Also contributing were Lolita Baldor and Dan Huff in Washington; Brian Barrett in New York; and Justin Myers in Chicago.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Can’t wait for this to come to my backyard. Maybe as a platform plank in the Deathsantis and Abbott & Costello 2024 presidential campaign and repub party platform?
You don't say? Time to start the rehabilitation tour for senate? They sound chastened too. Seems like they learned their/there/they're lesson. Definitely deserve a senate seat.
St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters plead guilty, will give up firearms
A St. Louis couple who gained notoriety for waving guns at racial justice protesters last summer pleaded guilty Thursday to misdemeanor charges and agreed to give up the guns they used during the confrontation.
Patricia McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment and was fined $2,000. Her husband, Mark McCloskey, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and was fined $750. The McCloskeys, both lawyers, will not face jail time.
The couple was indicted by a grand jury on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering, both felonies, and could have gone to jail if convicted. But the special prosecutor, Richard Callahan, opted to agree to lesser charges. On Thursday, Callahan said in a statement that he considered several factors when deciding how to resolve the case, including “the age and lack of a criminal record for the McCloskey’s, the fact they initially called the police, and the fact that no one was hurt and no shots were fired.”
“The protestors on the other hand were a racially mixed and peaceful group, including women and children, who simply made a wrong turn on their way to protest in front of the mayor’s house,” Callahan continued, adding that there was no evidence that any of the protesters were armed.
Video and photographs of rifle-wielding Mark McCloskey and pistol-toting Patricia McCloskey in front of their mansion inflamed controversy in June. The protesters were marching through the upscale gated community to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s (D) house amid nationwide protests after a police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The couple have touted themselves as conservative defenders against “the liberal mob,” earning a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. In May, Mark McCloskey announced that he was running for U.S. Senate as a Republican, using the images from that tense faceoff with protesters in his campaign ads.
In a statement Thursday, Mark McCloskey defended his reaction to what he called “an angry mob” that “threatened” his family and home.
“The prosecutor dropped all charges against me, except for a claim that I put other people in imminent fear of physical harm,” he said. “That’s exactly what I did, that’s what the guns were for. And any time the mob comes and threatens me, I’ll do the same thing again to protect my family.”
Circuit Judge David Mason accepted the couple’s pleas Thursday, but he denied their request to donate Mark McCloskey’s rifle to raise funds, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Do you gun owners in the us still have cool phrases like “guns, god and family.” If not you need a cool phrase. The god part I understand…keep playing with guns and you may get to meet god sooner or later…I mean if you believe in god. Really, other than hunting why do these fuckers need guns…something in your personality has to be fucked up…really fucked up. There are plenty of good, quality safe hobbies to choose from…
^^^^^^ Child's play. And we don't need no repercussions or legal consequences for those "responsible" gun owners, now do we?
Opinion: 2020 was the worst year ever for child gun deaths. We need prevention strategies now.
Dorothy R. Novick is a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a scholar with CHOP’s Center for Violence Prevention.
Covid-19 the virus has largely spared my pediatric patients, and for that I am eternally grateful. But covid-19 the pandemic has not. We are seeing more children with mental health concerns, eating disorders and school failure. And, we are seeing more children injured and killed by firearms.
Over 5,000 youths suffered gunshot wounds in 2020. A quarter of them did not survive. More youths under 17 years old died by gunfire last year than ever recorded, and the data for 2021 looks much the same.
As primary care pediatricians, we bear witness to the devastation. It drives us to be part of the solution and focus on preventive strategies that keep children out of the line of fire.
No words can describe a mother’s expression when she comes for her children’s care, and there is one less child for me to see. The loss of a child destroys not only family members, but also friends, schools and communities. I have been in practice for 25 years. I see how trauma persists and washes down over the next generation.
I do my best to offer empathy and support, but it never feels like enough. My training — the crux of my entire career — is centered around prevention.
We have done it with other kinds of injury. We’ve learned how to keep children safe inside cars, on bikes and while sleeping in cribs. We do this by identifying risk factors and intervening before our patients are hurt. We counsel families, advocate for policies that bolster our recommendations and spread the word through public-health messaging.
We can do it with guns.
To be sure, it is no easy task. Firearm ownership is one of the most polarizing issues of our time. But that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands. To the contrary, it means we try harder.
The factors putting so many children at risk for gun deaths and injuries during covid-19 are wide and interrelated. Children suffer gunshots in three different ways: They harm themselves or others unintentionally, they become suicidal or they fall victim to violent crime. All three have risen throughout the pandemic. School closures have left young children home with minimal supervision; social isolation has fueled adolescent depression; and economic instability has led to historic levels of violent crime. Each scenario becomes more lethal when guns are involved. And there are more guns where my patients live and play than ever before.
Firearm sales have skyrocketed since the pandemic took hold. Even before covid-19, 13 million children lived in a home with at least one gun. Then 2020 saw a 64 percent increase in firearm sales. More than 20 million guns were sold last year, and 6 million more left the shelves in early 2021. Every month seems to set a new record. This country has more guns than people.
Firearms are permanent fixtures. They do not easily break or decompose, and they are difficult to dispose of. The only way to protect children from these weapons is to store them safely away.
That means keeping firearms locked, unloaded and separate from ammunition. Studies show safe firearm storage protects children from unintentional shootings and suicide and can reduce community violence by preventing firearms from being lost and stolen.
As health-care providers, we can play a unique role by counseling about safe firearm storage. Some worry firearms are too sensitive a subject, but we are used to having conversations about personal aspects of peoples’ lives. When we approach safe storage collaboratively and without judgment, when we center the conversation around child safety and when we steer clear of politics, we find patients and families open and receptive.
Studies show we have the greatest impact when we also offer safety devices alongside this counseling. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where I practice, we now couple safe storage education with gun lock distribution.
We are making every effort to move the needle on safe firearm storage. But as with other causes of injury we’ve worked to prevent, we need the weight of policies and laws behind us.
We need every state in the nation to enact stringent safe storage, or “child access prevention” laws. These laws require gun owners to store firearms securely, keeping them away from children and other unauthorized users. Safe storage laws work. States with them see 59 percent fewer firearm fatalities among children. People listen more attentively when I can say, “Not only is it safer, it’s also the law.”
Public-health messaging, too, is more effective with the law behind it. Just like billboards that warn us to “click it or ticket” and “drive sober or pull over,” I dream of memorable slogans that make securing firearms as natural as buckling seat belts.
Firearm injuries have surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for our nation’s children. We can prevent them. We need every lethal weapon under lock and key.
Comments
States with the Most (& Least) Gun Deaths [+ Causes] (usinsuranceagents.com)
Tejas: 12.4 per !00,000
Massachusetts: 3.7 per 100,000
Regardless of the source, the numbers remain comparable. Get back to me when Tejas is more like Massachusetts. Or, go back to page 1 of this thread and read all of my posts to understand where I'm coming from rather than reading one cherrypicked post of mine. It'll make you blush.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Man mistaken for intruder fatally shot by best friend (msn.com)
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How is bringing up gun violence in MA in response to criticism of gun violence in TX not cherry picking?
No one's denying that gun violence is everywhere in this shit hole country of ours... with that being said, MA has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, and wouldn't you know it, one of the lowest rates of death by firearm... WAY lower than Texas. Go figure.
It's almost as if gun laws work, despite everything you've been told.
Missed the part about Miami ... I found it odd that all 6 of your examples were from MA... I guess I inferred something that wasn't there.
The fact that we are never shown the aftermath of mass shootings, and that any footage is usually swept up and removed from public view quickly reinforces that idea that people find it extremely disturbing.
https://apple.news/AOnOcqIjmTPqm1UzYlTNnBA
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Clearly, more guns and making them easier to obtain is the solution to ‘Murica’s gun violence problem. Too bad the rest of ‘Murica isn’t following Tejas’ lead. Don’t worry, won’t be long.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
CHICAGO (AP) — Two people were killed and at least 30 others wounded in mass shootings overnight in three states, authorities said Saturday, stoking concerns that a spike in U.S. gun violence could continue into summer as coronavirus restrictions ease and more people are free to socialize.
No one was arrested as of Saturday afternoon in any of the attacks, which took place late Friday or early Saturday in the Texas capital of Austin, Chicago and Savannah, Georgia.
In Austin, authorities said they arrested one of two male suspects and were searching for the other after a shooting early Saturday on a crowded pedestrian-only street packed with bars and restaurants. Fourteen people were wounded, including two critically, in the gunfire, which the city's interim police chief said is believed to have started as a dispute between two parties.
In Chicago, a woman was killed and nine other people were wounded when two men opened fire on a group standing on a sidewalk in the Chatham neighborhood on the city's South Side. The shooters also got away and hadn't been identified by mid-afternoon Saturday.
In the south Georgia city of Savannah, police said one man was killed and seven other people were wounded in a mass shooting Friday evening, police said. Two of the wounded are children — an 18-month-old and a 13-year-old.
Savannah's police chief, Roy Minter, Jr., said the shooting may be linked to an ongoing dispute between two groups, citing reports of gunshots being fired at the same apartment complex earlier in the week.
“It's very disturbing what we're seeing across the country and the level of gun violence that we're seeing across the country," he told reporters Saturday. "It's disturbing and it's senseless.”
The attacks come amid an easing of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in much of the country, including Chicago, which lifted many of its remaining safeguards on Friday. Many hoped that a spike in U.S. shootings and homicides last year was an aberration perhaps caused by pandemic-related stress amid a rise in gun ownership and debate over policing. But those rates are still higher than they were in pre-pandemic times, including in cities that refused to slash police spending following the death of George Floyd and those that made modest cuts.
“There was a hope this might simply be a statistical blip that would start to come down," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “That hasn't happened. And that's what really makes chiefs worry that we may be entering a new period where we will see a reversal of 20 years of declines in these crimes.”
Tracking ups and downs in crime is always complicated, but violent crime commonly increases in the summer months. Weekend evenings and early-morning hours also are common windows for shootings.
Many types of crime did decline in 2020 and have stayed lower this year, suggesting the pandemic and the activism and unrest spurred by the reaction to Floyd’s death didn’t lead to an overall spike in crime.
The 17 mass shootings in 2020 was the lowest annual total in a decade, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. The database tracks all mass killings including shootings, defined as four or more people dead not including the perpetrator.
According to that definition, there have been 17 mass killings, 16 of those shootings, already this year, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor at Northeastern University.
The Gun Violence Archive, which monitors media and police reports to track gun violence, defines mass shootings as those involving four or more people who were shot, regardless of whether they died. Overall, according to its database, more than 8,700 people have died of gun violence in the U.S. this year.
The GVA also found that mass shootings spiked in 2020 to about 600, which was higher than in any of the previous six years it tracked the statistic. According to this year's count, there have been at least 267 mass shootings in the U.S. so far, including the latest three overnight Friday into Saturday.
“It’s worrisome,” Fox said. “We have a blend of people beginning to get out and about in public. We have lots of divisiveness. And we have more guns and warm weather. It’s a potentially deadly mix.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://m.startribune.com/she-bought-47-guns-last-month-police-are-already-finding-them-in-shooting-investigations/600067591/
2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades. So far, 2021 is worse.
The shootings have come at a relentless pace. Gun violence this year has cut through celebrations and funerals, places of work and houses of worship. It has taken lives at a grocery store and in a fast-food drive-through lane.
And most of all, it has unfolded on city streets and in family homes, away from the cameras and far from the national spotlight.
By almost every measure, 2021 has already been a terrible year for gun violence. Many fear it will get worse. Last weekend alone, more than 120 people died in shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, with three especially dangerous incidents in Austin, Chicago and Savannah, Ga., leaving two dead and at least 30 injured.
Through the first five months of 2021, gunfire killed more than 8,100 people in the United States, about 54 lives lost per day, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research organization. That’s 14 more deaths per day than the average toll during the same period of the previous six years.
This year, the number of casualties, along with the overall number of shootings that have killed or injured at least one person, exceeds those of the first five months of 2020, which finished as the deadliest year of gun violence in at least two decades.
From 2015-2019, about 40 people per day were killed in incidents of gun violence. 2020 saw a huge increase in gun deaths compared with previous years and 2021 is trending higher.
Experts have attributed the increase to a variety of new and long-standing issues — including entrenched inequality, soaring gun ownership, and fraying relations between police and the communities they serve — all intensified during the coronavirus pandemic and widespread uprisings for racial justice. The violence, its causes and its solutions have sparked wide-ranging and fierce policy debates.
The Post’s analysis found an increase in shootings during summers, especially last year, echoing a trend that law enforcement officials and gun violence researchers have warned about for years. With the weather warming, school letting out and virus-related restrictions falling away, leaders are worrying about a deadlier season than usual.
“I’m scared to death of the summer, I’ll be real honest,” said Mark Bryant, the Gun Violence Archive’s founder. “I expect this to be a record year.”
Gunfire deaths began to rise in April 2020, when covid-19 shut down much of the country, in-person schooling was paused and more than 20 million people lost their jobs. Gun violence — like the coronavirus — takes an unequal toll on communities of color. So as the pandemic took hold, it was one crisis on top of another.
“What we have is compounded trauma,” said Shani Buggs, an assistant professor with the University of California at Davis’s Violence Prevention Research Program. “The pandemic exacerbated all of the inequities we had in our country — along racial lines, health lines, social lines, economic lines. All of the drivers of gun violence pre-pandemic were just worsened last year.”
In most places, violent-crime rates remain well below what they were in the 1980s and early 1990s, a period that gave way to “the great American crime decline.” But last year, in some of the country’s largest cities, homicides increased by a total of 30 percent when compared with 2019.
In July 2020, shooting deaths reached a peak of roughly 58 per day and continued, nearly unabated, around that level until early 2021.
Now, the numbers are rising again.
In the nation’s capital, 2020 set a recent record for homicides — mostly from gun violence — and their number is rising again, even with the annual summer crime prevention initiative well underway. Seventy-nine people were killed in the District during the first five months of 2021, a 23 percent increase over the previous year.
At a recent vigil for Kassius-Kohn Glay, a 16-year-old standout high school student who was fatally shot last month, his parents said they were conscious of the danger their son, a young Black man, would face in his Northwest Washington neighborhood. Last year, Glay saw his best friend die in a shooting.
“I don’t want this to happen no more,” Glay’s mother, Juanita Culbreth, said at the memorial. “To the last breath of my body, I’m going to be sure. I’m going to keep on advocating for y’all.”
After a string of deadly shootings in Miami, the city’s police chief, Art Acevedo, went on national television to warn about the coming months.
“Unless we all start speaking up, speaking out and demanding our elected officials take action, we’re going to see a lot more bloodshed,” Acevedo, who also heads the Major Cities Chiefs Association, said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
A week after Acevedo’s TV appearance, a shooting at a Miami graduation party left three dead and five wounded.
[Officials worry the rise in violent crime portends a bloody summer: ‘It’s trauma on top of trauma’]
Shootings have also increased in cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Columbus, Ohio. In Philadelphia, officials are preparing for what could be the deadliest year in the city’s history. The mayor is holding regular updates on gun violence, reminiscent of weekly coronavirus briefings.
But the rise in gun violence is not just a big-city phenomenon. The number of gunfire deaths has also increased in suburban and rural areas, though the overall numbers are lower because of smaller populations.
Researchers note a number of factors they say are driving the upswing, including the unprecedented surge in gun sales. In 2020, a year of pandemic, protests and elections, people purchased more than 23 million guns, a 66 percent increase over 2019 sales, according to a Post analysis of federal data on gun background checks.
In January and February of 2021, people bought more guns than they did during either month of any previous year in which such purchases were recorded. In January alone, about 2.5 million guns were sold, the third-highest one-month total, behind only June and July of 2020.
Before 2020, gun-sales spikes coincided with elections and mass shootings, such as the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in late 2012. Last year, the numbers climbed during pandemic-induced shutdowns and again in the summer, with millions protesting a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd.
Controlling for population, the analysis found the higher the jump in gun sales between 2019 and 2020, the higher the jump in gun violence that resulted in at least one death.
Michigan and Nevada were among the states with the largest per capita increase in gun sales and gun-related deaths, while Washington state and Oklahoma saw their rates of gun violence stay relatively flat.
A large body of research shows gun availability increases the relative risk of fatal shootings, and Buggs co-wrote a study last year that found an association between firearm purchases that spring and a statistically significant increase in firearm violence.
Researchers caution against drawing causal links, especially during a year as unique as 2020, and Buggs said gun sales are among a number of elements that “are difficult to tease out.” Others have noted that millions of guns were sold in past decades, when crime rates were falling, and have said one year of data is not enough to settle the matter.
Early numbers indicate a large slice of 2020 gun buyers — about a fifth — purchased their first-ever firearm.
That flood of new gun owners, plus a possible lack of in-person firearm-safety training because of coronavirus shutdowns, is a worrying combination for Cassandra Crifasi, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy.
That flood of new gun owners, plus a possible lack of in-person firearm-safety training because of coronavirus shutdowns, is a worrying combination for Cassandra Crifasi, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy.
“All of these people who bought guns in the context of fear around the pandemic and the unrest and uprising in relation to the murder of George Floyd, what do they do with those guns now?” she said.
The Post found the number of fatal shootings the Gun Violence Archive classified as some type of accident increased by more than 40 percent from 2019 to 2020. The number of deadly incidents involving children — who may get guns from adults who do not store them properly — also rose by 45 percent, though a share of that is attributable to other types of shootings. The analysis does not include suicides because real-time data is unavailable, but researchers have noted worrying signs that gun-related suicides, along with intimate-partner violence and family violence, are also on the rise.
The past 14 months have presented “a perfect storm,” Crifasi said. Along with the mass influx of guns, the pandemic fueled a recession that overwhelmingly affected low-wage and minority workers and would keep Black women and men out of jobs longer than other Americans. Then a police officer killed Floyd in Minneapolis, leading to an erosion of public confidence in law enforcement. The protests after Floyd’s murder yielded more images of police brutality. An increase in violence was underway, but it continued to rise, experts noted, just as it did after police killings in Ferguson, Mo., and Chicago in 2014.
Continued
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The pandemic and protests also thinned officer ranks, sickening them or sending them to manage unrest. Researcher and former U.S. district judge Paul Cassell has charted in some cities a decline in street and vehicle stops, termed “proactive policing.”
Through it all, young people were especially vulnerable, with activities that normally provide structure and support — in-person school, sports, social work and community-level violence-prevention programs — not operating.
California-based Advance Peace is one of those organizations.
Julius Thibodeaux Jr., the strategy program manager for the nonprofit’s Sacramento chapter, calls gun violence “the forgotten pandemic.” The work he and his team do to fight it depends on human-to-human contact. It can’t be done remotely.
Before covid-19, Sacramento was on a 28-month run of no juvenile homicides. But the pandemic temporarily shuttered the program, which works with those most at risk of being involved in gun violence — as perpetrators or victims. The regular life skills classes and one-on-one counseling were put on hold, outings to places such as Universal Studios and sports events were canceled, and just hanging out, having a conversation over a meal, became more difficult. All those interactions help build a foundation that prevents violence, Thibodeaux said.
“The pandemic really limited us in doing the very things that make the program successful,” he said. “I don’t think people know what it means to take a young person out of the environment where they’re impacted by trauma on a daily basis, to exhale, to take a look around and not feel threatened by their very environment.”
Thibodeaux has seen more anger in his city since the onset of the pandemic, more people looking to settle arguments with deadly weapons, more despair. Homicides in Sacramento rose by 26 percent from 2019 to 2020, and four young people were killed, including a 9-year-old girl, police reported.
[In Sacramento, trying to stop a killing before it happens]
It could have been worse, Thibodeaux said, if Advance Peace and groups like it hadn’t continued their work, even in a limited capacity. Advance Peace Sacramento says it mediated hundreds of conflicts that may have otherwise escalated. The group’s mentors prevented at least 84 “imminent gun violence conflicts” and responded to 83 shootings, stopping potential retaliation, according to a year-end report prepared by the University of California at Berkeley.
Advance Peace is starting to resume pre-pandemic operations, but many of the other problems linger, which is why experts expect the violence to continue.
During the pandemic’s first year, public mass shootings were largely absent from national headlines — until a pair of deadly rampages in March, roughly one week apart, in the Atlanta area and Boulder, Colo. This began a run of high-profile shootings, which account for a relatively small fraction of overall firearm deaths, that some have identified as a cluster, where one attack may prompt another.
But throughout 2020 and into 2021, there were soaring levels of shootings that killed or injured four or more people and didn’t get much widespread attention beyond the places they occurred.
This is happening amid growing calls to treat gun violence not only as a matter of law and order but as a public health concern.
Crifasi, of the Johns Hopkins center, has drawn a parallel to the opioid epidemic: Heroin wreaked havoc in Black communities for decades, giving rise to a “war on drugs.” But, she said, “as soon as opioids started impacting White communities, it was a public health crisis.”
“When we think about gun violence, it’s been ravaging Black and Brown communities for decades,” Crifasi said. “But it wasn’t until mass shootings started impacting predominantly White communities that people really started paying attention.”
There are signs that elected officials are increasingly embracing a public health approach, perhaps most notably in President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which includes $5 billion over eight years to fund gun violence prevention programs. Negotiations with Senate Republicans over the proposal are stalled.
That legislation, along with the latest covid-19 stimulus package, which allows local governments to direct federal relief money to gun violence prevention, could have a far-reaching impact, said Buggs, the UC Davis professor.
“The federal government has never invested in community violence intervention and prevention in this way,” she said.
The funding could help cities and organizations address the mental health challenges that come with the violence, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and feelings of isolation — work Buggs said police officers cannot do.
“In communities where there is gun violence, there needs to be conversations about how can we stop this,” she said. “How can we address people’s anger and fear and pain in ways that lower the risk of individuals solving disputes and conflicts in fatal ways?”
In D.C., officials recently rolled out a program to distribute grants to people or groups involved in promoting public safety. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced last month what he described as the largest-ever state investment in violence intervention and prevention, more than $200 million over three years.
This, Advance Peace’s Thibodeaux said, is a start.
“You can’t just say a prayer and throw pennies at this pandemic and expect it to go away,” he said. “It’s going to take more than prayer and pennies.”
ABOUT THIS STORY
Gun violence deaths and incidents based on data from the Gun Violence Archive. Post analysis on the Gun Violence Archive was limited to incidents with at least one death. Firearm sales estimates are based on methodology applied to FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System data surveying handgun, long-gun and multiple-gun background checks leading to purchases.
Editing by Danielle Rindler and Herman Wong.
Gun violence in 2021: Shootings in America are up and experts fear it may get worse - The Washington Post
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Most people with schizophrenia do not commit acts of violence — in fact, people with severe mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. But Kinkel’s voices demanded he commit terrible violence at an incredibly vulnerable time in his young life.
Mainly, how things might have been different if he wasn't given a rifle when he was 12, allowed to purchase a hand gun with money he had saved a year before he committed the killings and if he had gotten the appropriate mental health care with his father being more supportive of his getting treatment. Oh, and if "responsible" gun owners secured their firearms so they couldn't be stolen and sold for $110.00.
The ease with which firearms are obtained is absolutely ridiculous. 'Murica, and the shots ring out.
Kip Kinkel Is Ready To Speak | HuffPost Latest News
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By KRISTIN M. HALL, JAMES LAPORTA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD
The U.S. Army has hidden or downplayed the extent to which its firearms disappear, significantly understating losses and thefts even as some weapons are used in street crimes.
The Army’s pattern of secrecy and suppression dates back nearly a decade, when The Associated Press began investigating weapons accountability within the military. Officials fought the release of information for years, then offered misleading answers that contradict internal records.
Military guns aren’t just disappearing. Stolen guns have been used in shootings, brandished to rob and threaten people and recovered in the hands of felons. Thieves sold assault rifles to a street gang.
Army officials cited information that suggests only a couple of hundred firearms vanished during the 2010s. Internal Army memos that AP obtained show losses many times higher.
Efforts to suppress information date to 2012, when AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records from a registry where all four armed services are supposed to report firearms loss or theft.
The former Army insider who oversaw this registry described how he pulled an accounting of the Army’s lost or stolen weapons, but learned later that his superiors blocked its release.
As AP continued to press for information, including through legal challenges, the Army produced a list of missing weapons that was so clearly incomplete officials later disavowed it. They then produced a second set of records that also did not give a full count.
Secrecy surrounding a sensitive topic extends beyond the Army. The Air Force wouldn’t provide data on missing weapons, saying answers would have to await a federal records request AP filed 1.5 years ago.
The broader Department of Defense also has not released reports of weapons losses that it receives from the armed services. It would only provide approximate totals for two years of AP's 2010 through 2019 study period.
The Pentagon stopped regularly sharing information about missing weapons with Congress years ago, apparently in the 1990s. Defense Department officials said they would still notify lawmakers if a theft or loss meets the definition of being “significant,” but no such notification has been made since at least 2017.
On Tuesday, when AP first published its investigation, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., demanded during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the Pentagon resurrect regular reporting. In a written statement to AP, the Pentagon said it “looks forward to continuing to work with Congress to ensure appropriate oversight.”
Blumenthal also challenged Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on her branch’s release of information.
“I’d be happy to look into how we’ve handled this issue,” Wormuth replied. She described herself as “open to” a new reporting requirement and said the number of military firearms obtained by civilians is likely small.
Poor record-keeping in the military’s vast inventory systems means lost or stolen guns can be listed on property records as safe. Security breakdowns were evident all the way down to individual units, which have destroyed records, falsified inventory checks and ignored procedures.
Brig. Gen. Duane Miller, the No. 2 law enforcement official in the Army, said that when a weapon does vanish the case is thoroughly investigated. He pointed out that weapons cases are a small fraction of the more than 10,000 felony cases Army investigators open each year.
“I absolutely believe that the procedures we had in place absolutely mitigated any weapon from getting lost or stolen,” Miller said of his own experience as a commander. “But does it happen? It sure does.”
___
The Associated Press began investigating the loss and theft of military firearms by asking a simple question in 2011: How many guns are unaccounted for across the Army, Marines Corps, Navy and Air Force?
AP was told the answer could be found in the Department of Defense Small Arms and Light Weapons Registry. That centralized database, which the Army oversees, tracks the life cycle of rifles, pistols, shotguns, machine guns and more -- from supply depots to unit armories, through deployments, until the weapon is destroyed or sold.
Getting data from the registry, however, would require a formal Freedom of Information Act request.
That request, filed in 2012, came to Charles Royal, then the longtime Army civilian employee who was in charge of the registry at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.
Royal was accustomed to inquiries. Military and civilian law enforcement agencies would call him thousands of times each year, often because they were looking for a military weapon or had recovered one.
In response to AP’s request, Royal pulled and double-checked data on missing weapons. Royal then showed the results to his boss, the deputy commander of his department.
“After he got it, he said, ‘We can’t be letting this out like this,’” said Royal, who retired in 2014, in an interview last year.
His boss didn’t say exactly why, but Royal said the release he prepared on weapons loss was heavily scrutinized within the Army.
“The numbers that we were going to give was going to kind of freak everybody out to a certain extent,” Royal said -- not just because they were firearms, but also because the military requires strict supervision of them.
AP was unable to reach Royal’s supervisor and an Army spokesman had no comment on the handling of the FOIA request.
In 2013, the Army said it would not release any records. The AP appealed that decision and, nearly four years later, Army lawyers agreed that registry records should be public.
It wasn’t until 2019 that the Army released a small batch of data. The records from the registry showed 288 firearms over six years.
Though years in the making, the response was clearly incomplete.
Standing in the stacks at the public library in Decatur, Alabama, last fall, Royal reviewed the seven printed pages of records that Army eventually provided AP.
“This is worthless,” he said.
Told that in multiple years, the Army reported just a single missing weapon, Royal was skeptical. “Out of the millions that they handled, that’s wrong,” he said in a later interview. AP has appealed the FOIA release for a second time.
The data weren’t even accurate when compared to Army criminal investigation records. Using the unique serial numbers assigned to every weapon, AP identified 19 missing firearms that were not in the registry data. This included a M240B machine gun that an Army National Guard unit reported missing in Wyoming in 2014.
The Army could not explain the discrepancy.
Reporters also filed another records act request for criminal cases opened by Army investigators.
In response, Army’s Criminal Investigation Command produced summaries of closed investigations into missing or stolen weapons, weapons parts, explosives or ammunition.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Brandon Kelley said that the records were “the Army’s most accurate list of physical losses.” Yet again, the total from the records provided -- 230 missing rifles or handguns during the 2010s -- was a clear undercount.
The records did not reflect several major closed cases and excluded open cases, which typically take years to finish. That meant any weapons investigators are actively trying to track down were not part of the total.
Army’s first two answers -- 288 and 230 -- are contradicted by an internal analysis, one that officials initially denied they had done.
Asked in an interview whether the Army analyzes trends of missing weapons, Miller said no -- there were breakdowns of murders, rapes and property crimes, but not weapons loss or theft.
“I don’t spend a lot of time tracking this data,” Miller said.
In fact, in 2019 and 2020, the Army distributed memos describing military weapons loss as having “the highest importance.” The numbers of missing “arms and arms components remain the same or increased” over the seven years covered by the memos, called ALARACTs.
A trend analysis in the document cited theft and “neglect” as the most common factors.
The memos counted 1,303 missing rifles and handguns from 2013-2019.
During the same seven years, the investigative records the Army said were authoritative showed 62 lost or stolen rifles or handguns.
Army officials said that some number they couldn’t specify were recovered among the 1,303. The data, which could include some combat losses and may include some duplications, came from criminal investigations and incident reports. The internal memos are not “an authoritative document,” and were not closely checked with public release in mind, Army spokesman Kelley said.
Members of Miller’s physical security division were tracking the data, though Miller said he wasn’t personally aware of the memos until AP brought them to his attention. He said that that if he were, he would have shared them.
“When one weapon is lost, I’m concerned. When 100 weapons are lost, I’m concerned. When 500 are lost, I’m concerned,” Miller said in a second interview.
Each armed service is supposed to inform the Office of the Secretary of Defense of losses or thefts. That office also has not released data to AP, but spokesman John Kirby gave approximate numbers of missing weapons for the past few years. The numbers were lower than AP’s totals.
“There is no effort to conceal,” Kirby said. “There is no effort to obstruct.”
___
Hall reported from Nashville, Tennessee; LaPorta reported from Boca Raton, Florida; Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Also contributing were Lolita Baldor and Dan Huff in Washington; Brian Barrett in New York; and Justin Myers in Chicago.
__
Contact Hall at https://twitter.com/kmhall; contact LaPorta at https://twitter.com/jimlaporta; contact Pritchard at https://twitter.com/JPritchardAP
__
Email AP’s Global Investigations Team at investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/. See other work at https://www.apnews.com/hub/ap-investigations.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/16/politics/texas-permitless-gun-bill-abbott/index.html
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St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters plead guilty, will give up firearms
A St. Louis couple who gained notoriety for waving guns at racial justice protesters last summer pleaded guilty Thursday to misdemeanor charges and agreed to give up the guns they used during the confrontation.
Patricia McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment and was fined $2,000. Her husband, Mark McCloskey, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and was fined $750. The McCloskeys, both lawyers, will not face jail time.
The couple was indicted by a grand jury on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering, both felonies, and could have gone to jail if convicted. But the special prosecutor, Richard Callahan, opted to agree to lesser charges. On Thursday, Callahan said in a statement that he considered several factors when deciding how to resolve the case, including “the age and lack of a criminal record for the McCloskey’s, the fact they initially called the police, and the fact that no one was hurt and no shots were fired.”
“The protestors on the other hand were a racially mixed and peaceful group, including women and children, who simply made a wrong turn on their way to protest in front of the mayor’s house,” Callahan continued, adding that there was no evidence that any of the protesters were armed.
Video and photographs of rifle-wielding Mark McCloskey and pistol-toting Patricia McCloskey in front of their mansion inflamed controversy in June. The protesters were marching through the upscale gated community to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s (D) house amid nationwide protests after a police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The couple have touted themselves as conservative defenders against “the liberal mob,” earning a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. In May, Mark McCloskey announced that he was running for U.S. Senate as a Republican, using the images from that tense faceoff with protesters in his campaign ads.
In a statement Thursday, Mark McCloskey defended his reaction to what he called “an angry mob” that “threatened” his family and home.
“The prosecutor dropped all charges against me, except for a claim that I put other people in imminent fear of physical harm,” he said. “That’s exactly what I did, that’s what the guns were for. And any time the mob comes and threatens me, I’ll do the same thing again to protect my family.”
Circuit Judge David Mason accepted the couple’s pleas Thursday, but he denied their request to donate Mark McCloskey’s rifle to raise funds, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters, plead guilty - The Washington Post
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https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/us/arizona-shootings-victims/index.html
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Very strict gun laws
NO FEAR
Charges laid after Toronto shooting at toddler's birthday party that injured three kids
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/charges-laid-after-toronto-shooting-at-toddler-s-birthday-party-that-injured-three-kids-1.5479598
People who play with guns have the iq of a gnat…
Take up kick boxing, boxing or mma to prove your toughness…lol.
^^^^^^ Child's play. And we don't need no repercussions or legal consequences for those "responsible" gun owners, now do we?
Opinion: 2020 was the worst year ever for child gun deaths. We need prevention strategies now.
Dorothy R. Novick is a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a scholar with CHOP’s Center for Violence Prevention.
Covid-19 the virus has largely spared my pediatric patients, and for that I am eternally grateful. But covid-19 the pandemic has not. We are seeing more children with mental health concerns, eating disorders and school failure. And, we are seeing more children injured and killed by firearms.
Over 5,000 youths suffered gunshot wounds in 2020. A quarter of them did not survive. More youths under 17 years old died by gunfire last year than ever recorded, and the data for 2021 looks much the same.
As primary care pediatricians, we bear witness to the devastation. It drives us to be part of the solution and focus on preventive strategies that keep children out of the line of fire.
No words can describe a mother’s expression when she comes for her children’s care, and there is one less child for me to see. The loss of a child destroys not only family members, but also friends, schools and communities. I have been in practice for 25 years. I see how trauma persists and washes down over the next generation.
I do my best to offer empathy and support, but it never feels like enough. My training — the crux of my entire career — is centered around prevention.
We have done it with other kinds of injury. We’ve learned how to keep children safe inside cars, on bikes and while sleeping in cribs. We do this by identifying risk factors and intervening before our patients are hurt. We counsel families, advocate for policies that bolster our recommendations and spread the word through public-health messaging.
We can do it with guns.
To be sure, it is no easy task. Firearm ownership is one of the most polarizing issues of our time. But that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands. To the contrary, it means we try harder.
The factors putting so many children at risk for gun deaths and injuries during covid-19 are wide and interrelated. Children suffer gunshots in three different ways: They harm themselves or others unintentionally, they become suicidal or they fall victim to violent crime. All three have risen throughout the pandemic. School closures have left young children home with minimal supervision; social isolation has fueled adolescent depression; and economic instability has led to historic levels of violent crime. Each scenario becomes more lethal when guns are involved. And there are more guns where my patients live and play than ever before.
Firearm sales have skyrocketed since the pandemic took hold. Even before covid-19, 13 million children lived in a home with at least one gun. Then 2020 saw a 64 percent increase in firearm sales. More than 20 million guns were sold last year, and 6 million more left the shelves in early 2021. Every month seems to set a new record. This country has more guns than people.
Firearms are permanent fixtures. They do not easily break or decompose, and they are difficult to dispose of. The only way to protect children from these weapons is to store them safely away.
That means keeping firearms locked, unloaded and separate from ammunition. Studies show safe firearm storage protects children from unintentional shootings and suicide and can reduce community violence by preventing firearms from being lost and stolen.
As health-care providers, we can play a unique role by counseling about safe firearm storage. Some worry firearms are too sensitive a subject, but we are used to having conversations about personal aspects of peoples’ lives. When we approach safe storage collaboratively and without judgment, when we center the conversation around child safety and when we steer clear of politics, we find patients and families open and receptive.
Studies show we have the greatest impact when we also offer safety devices alongside this counseling. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where I practice, we now couple safe storage education with gun lock distribution.
We are making every effort to move the needle on safe firearm storage. But as with other causes of injury we’ve worked to prevent, we need the weight of policies and laws behind us.
We need every state in the nation to enact stringent safe storage, or “child access prevention” laws. These laws require gun owners to store firearms securely, keeping them away from children and other unauthorized users. Safe storage laws work. States with them see 59 percent fewer firearm fatalities among children. People listen more attentively when I can say, “Not only is it safer, it’s also the law.”
Public-health messaging, too, is more effective with the law behind it. Just like billboards that warn us to “click it or ticket” and “drive sober or pull over,” I dream of memorable slogans that make securing firearms as natural as buckling seat belts.
Firearm injuries have surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for our nation’s children. We can prevent them. We need every lethal weapon under lock and key.
Opinion | 2020 was the worst year ever for child gun deaths. We need prevention strategies now. - The Washington Post
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